System Tray

In one of the tips I wrote last week, I happened to mention the term “system tray” and without thinking much about it, I figured most computer users know what that is. Well, when I got back into the office on Monday, I had quite a few e-mails from you all asking me about it. So, evidently I was wrong and I want to take this time to apologize for never writing a tip on it before. It should have been covered way back in the very beginning. Hopefully, some of you will be able to forgive me after today though!

Alright, so what is the system tray? Basically, the system tray is located at the very bottom of your desktop in the taskbar (which is the long bar that runs all the way across your desktop). If you look along the taskbar, you’ll see some icons in the quick launch area, then you have some open space for any programs, etc. you have open and then on the very far right, you’ll see where the system tray sits.

The system tray contains the clock icon, the volume icon and various other icons, depending on what all you have installed on your computer. Usually, your antivirus program icon will be there, it’s where your printer icon shows up, your modem icon is there, the safely remove hardware icon sits there and so on. If you need to use any of the items in your system tray, all you have to do is double click on the icons and the programs will open. So, as you can see, the system tray is home to a lot of important applications on your PC. And now you know all about it. Yes!

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